Now that I’m falling in love with AI agents, I’m not thrilled about the cost so I’ve been doing some deep tracking into the cost of tasks and activities. I will caution you that this is my cost based on how I have things configured, how I am tasking AI with activities and the desired output. Your cost will vary based on your use, which AI models are involved and other variables too complex to get into here.
Week Long Trip Plan Using Claude AI (Primarily)
The infographic below is a sample of a half day use of my Claude AI agent/bot. In the morning, I asked it to review my Baltic states itinerary and specifically focus on filling out the safety summary tab. After it finished with that task, I asked it to use the entire template from my Baltic states trip and replicate it for another trip to Berlin, Germany. The template has all the things that are important to me on a trip.
It’s safe to say using Claude to plan a complete week long trip will cost you at least $6 in tokens. Updating an existing itinerary with minor information or changes will cost around $2.
What Does The Final Product Look Like?
So what do you get for $6? I have attached some screenshots below for a sample itinerary for a visit to Berlin. Claude did 100% of the work from a template I had from a previous trip and enhanced it a bit. Normally, I would spend hours putting all the information together but Claude did it in a few minutes.
Summary Page
Day By Day Planner
Dining
Safety & Security
Resources (Links To Book Stuff)
Those are a few sample screen shots, I think it’s a fairly comprehensive travel plan and it includes all the links to book activities, recommended hotels based on my elite status at chains, train/plane/ferry/bus tickets, dining, safety, and other things like credit card optimization. It only cost $5, well worth it to save hours of time.
All I told my agent to create this was this sentence: “Using the template from the last trip (Baltic), create a new week long travel plan for Berlin, Germany.” Of course, I did an “interview” with my travel AI agent bot when I first set it up and it recorded all my preferences, hotel chains, tiers, etc but it has all of that now and it knows what I like and don’t like. My AI bot now knows me better than my family.
The best part is that it filters out all the “noise” and customizes the experience to my wants and needs. For example, I don’t hang out at bars but I have brothers that do and if they were going on this trip, bars would likely be on the itinerary but since they’re not, there aren’t any.
WordPress Blogging (DeepSeek)
I have had my Robby AI bot write posts for this blog and a few other things and it primarily uses DeepSeek to perform tasks. I don’t have an infographic for that because the entire whopping bill for a week’s worth of work on DeepSeek has cost me $5. There is still some research involved here and a few tasks but DeepSeek really is a bargain AI model.
I would say most tasks that result in a deliverable (output) on DeepSeek are probably costing about $0.25. This is why I wrote a post about China winning the AI war on cost. The writing is on the wall here, AI tokens will become a commodity at some point and if the US doesn’t find a way to lower the cost of tokens, China wins by default.
The only exception is if one of these companies comes up with a unique AI model that specializes in something no one else has but that is a long shot.
Using The Monthly Subscription
I have subscriptions to Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT and those costs are monthly $19.99, $20, and $20 for me. There are different prices for different levels of service but that’s what I’m paying.
I used the Claude monthly sub to build my AI trading app so I have no idea what the true cost was in terms of tokens. If you’re short on cash then your best bet is to use the chatbots on the monthly sub and stick with that but if you want to setup autonomous AI agents you will need tokens and those now cost additional money.
All my other apps were developed using Google’s Antigravity and the cost there was the monthly subscription fee as I didn’t pay for any tokens.
Next Steps?
I find the AI bots extremely useful but I don’t like the “Rolls Royce” cost of Claude nor the “Cadillac” cost of OpenAI so the trade off is I will likely move to “Toyota Camry” DeepSeek for most of my AI bots work and only use Claude or OpenAI for specialized work in finance or programming. I will definitely stick to using the monthly subs for most application development work for now.
Share The Wealth
What are you paying for autonomous AI agents? Don’t be stingy, share the wealth!